


i giorni

by legdabs (scvlly)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Drabble, Established Relationship, M/M, but it sorta went off somewhere n idk where, idk what this is it's like loosely based on the patronus vid, it's not angst! just like........ i don't even know what it is man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 09:49:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12981471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scvlly/pseuds/legdabs
Summary: he’ll take sometimes over forever because they don’t think in eternities.





	i giorni

 

* * *

 

Dan doesn’t know a fucking thing about astronomy. Or astrology. Whichever’s which, he’s not really sure, to be honest, but he doesn’t know anything about either one.

Sure, he’ll read his horoscope sometimes, when there’s nothing of political interest in the Evening Standard to get his blood boiling and he’s actually outside to pick up a newspaper. 

‘Hey Phil,’ he’ll call, spreading the paper across the dining table. ‘What’s your star sign?’

Dan knows full well what Phil’s star sign is, but he still asks.

‘Aquarius.’ Phil answers as he answers every time, leaving the shopping he’s usually putting away to lean against the back of a chair sat on the other side of the table.

Dan will clear his throat, find the section with the tip of his finger. ‘Well buddy, you wanna hear about your future?’

‘Of course.’

 

* * *

 

To say that Dan doesn’t know a fucking thing about astronomy would actually be somewhat inaccurate. 

Dan knows that Phil didn’t hang the moon in the sky, even if he sometimes looks at him like he did; that he didn’t scatter the stars to calm Dan every time he looks at the night sky, even though sometimes it feels like he could’ve. 

He also once Googled the title of an episode of the X-Files to find out what it meant. 

Syzygy. 

It turns out, it’s a bit of an umbrella term for a configuration of three celestial bodies. Usually it’s the moon and the sun and the Earth, but sometimes it’s other things. 

Dan thinks it’s an odd word, but he’s somewhat enamoured with the concept. Three things that can exist separately, but sometimes they align and create something beautiful or chaotic or just plain _different_ and it’s enough to capture the attention of a lot of people who give it a name like ‘syzygy’ and want to observe it or analyse it or are dragged into being a part of it through circumstances beyond their control.

His tendency to romanticise tells him that maybe he and Phil are a syzygy, though he’s not sure of the third part to their alignment. 

Maybe it’s their audience. Maybe it’s the internet. Maybe it’s time. 

He wonders if the third part is a help or hinderance. If they are what they are because of or in spite of the external force with which they inadvertently interact. 

 

* * *

 

Phil doesn’t really buy into Dan’s syzygy idea, even though that’s normally more his ‘thing’ than Dan’s. He’s just fine believing that destiny, however abstract, brought them together, thank you very much. No need for arching metaphors or the application of something masquerading as a rational theory to make them into something even more extraordinary than they already are.

He knows Dan likes it, though. For whatever reason. It’s unlike him to assign meaning and a purpose to that which he would usually insist is coincidence, but then he’s not unchanging. He’s not a constant; at least, not in that way. 

He’s allowed to change and to surprise, and he does. So does Phil. They’re allowed to know each other better than anyone else on Earth, without really knowing each other at all; at least, not completely. Not to the point of unpredictability, to the point where nothing is a surprise or ever changes or happens without question. To be quite honest, they wouldn’t want to.

It’s a bit like the way that they never make promises in eternities, in forever, because it’s a currency that they can’t control. 

This isn’t to say that they’re wavering or afraid of commitment of any kind. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they’re most constant in their love of one another, but even that isn’t unchanging. Sometimes Phil loves Dan so much that he can physically feel the tug in his heart with a rush of emotion. Sometimes Phil loves Dan with the kind of love that you feel for your best friend, for someone you enjoy spending time with, chatting and playing games and lounging around doing nothing in particular. Sometimes Phil feels his love for Dan through annoyance or exasperation, a fond frustration through which he can’t help but smile.

Sometimes. 

Not always.

But Phil doesn’t want always.

 

* * *

 

Phil doesn’t actually care for what the horoscope thinks it knows about what’s coming for him in the next few days, or weeks, or months, or even years.

Phil doesn’t care for what’s _actually_ coming for him in the next few days, weeks, and months. Years, maybe. But that’s a scary enough stretch of time to ignore and to _definitely_ not want to _know_ about. 

Phil has no desire to hear about his future.

The future is a bit like forever, to his mind. A predicted future is like forever because it’s too big to deal with; too unchanging and intimidating and it sounds like a false promise that was made with good intentions, but one that can’t be kept because it’s impossible, really, and… yeah. That’s just the way it is.

 

* * *

 

Every time after Dan offers to read the horoscope, he will move his finger from the section in the Evening Standard where all of the secrets of the universe are stored, the prophetic predictions for all people born between the twentieth of January and the eighteenth of February which are somehow vague enough to be accurate for a majority of those who care, and he’ll meet Phil’s eyes.

‘I don’t think that this is your future.’

He’ll say it every time, because every time he doesn’t actually read the horoscope. Why would he? He’s pretty sure that Phil doesn’t want to know, and it’s all bullshit anyway; astrology is only good for teaching him the names of constellations that he can’t ever pick out of the sky because let’s be honest, none of them _actually_ look like what they’re supposed to.

‘I think you’re right.’ Phil will respond. He’ll say it because it’s true; not because it’s his line, the exact response he says every time, even though it _is_ exactly what he says every time.

‘I can tell you about now, though,’ Dan will offer. His eyes still linked with Phil’s, he’ll tell a truth; one which may not last forever, one which may only be true sometimes. 

‘You look really good today,’ he might say.

Or: ‘I wish you didn’t put our fucking apples in the fridge.’

Or: ‘I love you.’

And Phil will blush or laugh or say something equally honest in return, and then they’ll carry on. They’ll carry on and move away from this routine of sorts until next time, away from this accidental pantomime they’ve created for themselves where there’s an element of fixed story and an element of improvisation, but always that potential for unpredictability, the knowledge that either of them could deviate from the script they’ve created and change the story completely. 

That’s why Phil doesn’t want to know any certainties about his future.

It’s why Dan doesn’t promise a forever he can’t provide.

 

* * *

 

To Phil, the greatest flaw in Dan’s syzygy analogy is that it insists they call themselves celestial bodies, and that in itself is more than a minor stretch. But Dan argues it’s a description of them too convenient to cast aside on semantics. Phil, himself, and something else. 

Maybe they don’t cause eclipses or tidal patterns or earthquakes. But they met in spite of time, in spite of the distance; their career is what it is because of the internet and their audience, and their relationship is something they manage to maintain despite their very public existences. In spite of which ever of these things is the one being played by that third actor who conspired in so many ways to keep them apart, as the moon moves in front of the sun to obscure its light for those on Earth. Or maybe it was that third actor who played the part which brought them together. 

Maybe distance and time and their audience and the internet aren’t always present, maybe they won’t always be factors that they consider. Maybe it’ll take a long while to find out the third part of their configuration or maybe they’ll work it out tomorrow; maybe it’s a matter for a time in the future without a date, one that may never happen. Maybe it’s better not to know.

It doesn’t matter. They have what they have, are what they are, outside of promises and forevers that they can’t control. They don’t need hyperbole or well-intentioned lies.

Sometimes, to be together in the moment, is enough.

 

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr: legdabs.tumblr.com


End file.
